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What Is The Abuse Of Power In Animal Farm

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When you think of tyrannical rulers, you never think of pigs, however, in the Animal Farm novel, the cruel behavior, complete control, and the hierarchy of classes, differentiates them from the other animals. The book Animal Farm is about a group of farm animals who have been tortured and mistreated until the animals rebel against their owner. The animals decide to run the farm themselves. Manor Farm has two weeks of perfect utopia; however, the idea of communism is only perfect on paper. The pigs indirectly start to take over the farm. These four pigs have extreme power over the animals; it baffles people to how naive the other animals can be. The four pigs with the most power and the main characters in the novel are Napoleon, snowball, squealer, and old major. Old Major had the higher power over the other animals because he already made himself seem powerful. In …show more content…

The animals have no idea what is going on in Animal Farm since squealer uses his charming words to confuse the animals. Napoleon, the boar, has many goals but the main one was to have complete and absolute power. The pigs act in specific situations to weaken equality and give up their freedom by giving fewer rations to the other animals and forcing them to work on Sundays. The other animals do not realize that the animals are losing their freedom and equality because they are not smart and do not understand the conflict. The pigs do influence the attitude and behaviors of other followers on animal farm. They rule the farm and make the decisions and if the other animals do not listen, they did not see the light of the next day. The character of the pigs is extremely different from most of the other animals. The pigs represent the higher power in the real world. The pigs are self-serving. They only take care of themselves and strive for

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As the story nears the end, the pigs are deeply corrupt and noticeably similar to

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They placed themselves at the top of the hierarchy because they knew the animals would blindly follow their reasoning (science, as Squealer said) and used this to their advantage to get better conditions, in this case, food, for themselves. Another example is when the pigs gave their excuse for not doing any work on the farm- claiming they had their own responsibilities that the other animals were not smart enough to understand. The text says, "There was, as Squealer was never tired of explaining, endless work in the supervision and organization of the farm. Much of this work was of a kind that the other animals were too ignorant

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Snowball can be the worker and Napoleon. And a farm animal stand up for the other farm animals that animal can have power over Snowball or Napoleon or both. The animal can make the other animal work he have power if the animal have too much power it can get scared. The animal can get a fear about power if too much power it might in more scary then he or she is. That old Major, the prize Middle White boar, had had a strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals.

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As intelligent characters, the pigs assume leadership positions after Old Major death. Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer take charge of the farm and take it upon them to organize and prepare the Animals for the revolution. As leaders of Animal Farm they introduce the commandments, teach the other animals how to read and write and host meetings with the other animals. As we further progress in the book, we

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Animal Farm is George Orwell’s satire on equality, where all barnyard animals live free from their human masters' tyranny. Inspired to rebel by Major, an old boar, animals on Mr. Jones' Manor Farm embrace Animalism and stage a revolution to achieve an idealistic state of justice and progress. A power-hungry pig, Napoleon, becomes a totalitarian dictator who leads the Animal Farm into "All Animals Are Equal / But Some Are More Equal Than Others”(Orwell 118) oppression. The utopia of Animal Farm fails because of Napoleon and Squealer’s propaganda, fearful animals, and blind followers.

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The rulers of the farm take advantage of the low reading skills that the rest of the animals possess and use that weakness against them, as the animals just believe whatever the pigs tell them to, as they have no reason not to. The pigs’ goals seem intact and they do

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This relates to the theme because, throughout the story, the pigs have been in charge because they have more knowledge than the other animals. They were also really clever and could think of a way around every difficulty the farm experienced. ( Orwell 13) In the middle of the story, some crucial rules were being changed and the animals did not do anything about it. “ … pigs not only took their meals in the kitchen and used the drawing-room as a recreation room, but also slept in the beds.”

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Animal Farm -the history of a rebellion that went wrong- is George Orwell 's brilliant satire on the corrupting influence of power. It was first published in 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. In the book, Mr. Jones, the owner of the Manor farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock.

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Because of these differences the animals are not able to form a cohesive bond, and are not able to work together for the good of the farm. From the very beginning of their new freedom a power hierarchy begins to appear on the farm. The pigs are slacking off in jobs, and being bossy towards other animals. The animals also have made a list of commandments to follow in order for the farm to be successful which the pigs slowly break throughout the book. Benjamin, the apathetic donkey quickly takes note of what's going on but doesn’t care to mention it to any of the other animals.

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Initially in Animal Farm, intending to help the animals achieve equality, the pigs (Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer) with their “superior knowledge” take the initiative to set Old Major’s dream into motion. At this point, power is already subtly shown as the pigs are the ones to “direct and supervise” the revolutions whilst the other animals have completely no say in the process of executioning the humans. Moreover, with Snowball giving orders e.g. “you do not need sugar” and Napoleon claiming that he will “lead the way”, it hints that the pigs are determined to take advantage of their intelligence to gratify their desires for controlling the animals. In fact, the farm is able to achieve prosperity and joy until Napoleon’s strong desire for

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However, Orwell depicted, “The animals would still assemble on Sunday mornings to salute to the flag, sing Beasts of England, and receive their orders for the week; but there would be no more debates” (Orwell 54). In the past, the animals had the ability to speak out at the farm Meetings, even if they chose not to. However, now that Napoleon took this right away from them, he got to be in charge of all the decisions for the farm and no one could contradict him. As Animal Farm developed, the pigs slowly disregarded animals’ rights and opinions, and the farm subtly gained more dystopian

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For example, soon after the rebellion, the pigs keep all the apples and milk to themselves. The quote, “So it was agreed...that the milk and the apples should be reserved for the pigs alone,”(Orwell 53) clearly shows that the pigs use some trickery and reserve the better food for themselves. Later in the book, the pigs also move into Farmer Jones’ house even after they set it aside as a museum. And on top of that, they start sleeping in beds and drinking

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For example, the pigs thought they were more important or inferior to the other animals. At the beginning of the book, the pigs were decided to be the leaders because of their intelligence and their ability to read and write. The pigs wrote seven commandments on the top of the barn and one of them was “All Animals are Equal” page 24. This is important because the seven commandments end up being broken by the leader of the pigs Napoleon. At first,

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This is exactly what the humans did and the pigs, in effect, take over from the humans and rule in just the same oppressive manner. In this way, they destroy the original ideals of the revolution which called for complete equality for all animals and the rejection of all human contact. By the end of the novel, the pigs are in an open alliance with the humans and behave just like them, even by walking on two legs. A revolution aimed at improving the lives of the animals, with the best possible intentions, has degenerated into a nightmare. Similar to the creation and destruction of the Soviet Union, Napoleon in Animal Farm is directly connected to Joseph Stalin, while Snowball represents Leon Trotsky, and Old Major is Vladimir Lenin.

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One dominant theme in animal farm is totalitarianism and abuse of power. Totalitarianism is defined as a political system in which the state possesses complete authority over the society and controls all aspects of public and private life whenever necessary. The author criticized totalitarianism and believed that it was inevitable in a communist system, as those put in charge will result in the abuse of their power. The theme Orwell intended to get across was that all totalitarian regimes are the same and those who hold power will do anything to maintain it. The pigs, who were the leaders, frequently displayed this throughout the novel.

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